Discover the Boston of the 1800s, when Back Bay was just a wide expanse of water to the west of the Shawmut Peninsula and merchants peddled their wares to sailors along the docks, in this book by regional historian Ted Clarke. Illustrated with archival photos, drawings, and reproductions, this history of Boston evokes the beginning of America's industrial revolution and recounts how a series of cultural movements made the city the focal point of abolitionism in America. Here too Clarke explores a golden age in the arts with such notables as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., John Singleton Copley, John Singer Sargent, and Isabella Stewart Gardner.